Nicholas groaned. Why would his mother do such a thing?

“She’s terribly eager to hear about your studies. Everyone is. But you’re tired. It’s your choice.”

“So I don’t have to go?”

His mother smiled sweetly. “Everyone will be there.”

“Right,” Nicholas said, in a voice just one shade shy of bitterness. “So really, no choice at all.”

Sounded just like the rest of his life.

Chapter 3

Georgiana Bridgerton had lost many things in her life—a leather-bound notebook she’d been particularly fond of, the key to her sister Billie’s jewelry box, two left shoes—but this was the first time she’d lost her reputation.

It was proving far more difficult to replace than the notebook.

Or the shoes.

She’d taken a hammer to the jewelry box, and while no one had been pleased with the ensuing carnage, Billie’s emerald bracelet had been safely recovered.

And never lent out again, but Georgie deserved no less.

But reputations …

Those were slippery, fickle things, resistant to repair and repatriation, and it didn’t matter if one had absolutely NOTHING TO DO with the aforementioned loss. Society was not kind to females who broke the rules.

It wasn’t kind to females, full stop.

Georgie sent a stare down the length of her bed to her three cats, Judyth, Blanche, and Cat-Head. “It’s not fair,” she said.

Judyth placed one silvery-gray paw on Georgie’s ankle, as sympathetic a gesture as one could expect from the most aloof of the three felines.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d said those four words, in that order.

“I never said I would marry him.”

Or those.

Blanche yawned.

“I know,” Georgie responded. “I didn’t even break the rules. I never break the rules.”

It was true. She didn’t. Which was probably why Freddie Oakes thought it would be so easy to break them for her.

She supposed she’d encouraged him—not to kidnap her, mind you, but she’d behaved as any proper young lady might when shown interest by an eligible young gentleman. She hadn’t discouraged him, at any rate. They’d danced once at Lady Manston’s soirée and then twice at the local assembly room, and when Georgie had gone to London with her mother, he’d called upon her quite properly at Bridgerton House.

There had been nothing—nothing—in his behavior to suggest that he was an amoral, bankrupt cad.

So when he’d suggested an outing to Pemberton’s bookshop, she’d accepted with delight. She loved bookshops, and everyone knew the best were in London.

She’d dressed exactly as an unmarried lady might for such an excursion, and when Freddie had arrived in his family’s carriage, she’d joined him with a smile on her face and her maid Marian at her side.

Ladies didn’t get into closed carriages with gentlemen without a chaperone. And Georgie never broke that sort of rule.

From the bookshop they’d walked to the Pot and Pineapple for tea and cakes, which were delicious, and again everything that was acceptable and expected in a young lady’s behavior and agenda.

Georgie really wanted to make this clear, not that anyone was listening aside from her cats. She had done nothing wrong.

Nothing. Wrong.

When it was time to depart, Freddie was all graciousness and solicitude, carefully handing her up into the carriage before climbing in himself. The Oakes’s groom was right there to offer the same courtesy to Marian, but then Freddie slammed the door in both of their faces, pounded his fist against the ceiling, and they’d taken off like a shot, right down Berkeley Street.

They’d almost run over a dog.

Marian had been hysterical. So had the Oakes’s groom, for that matter. He’d not been in on the scheme and had feared both immediate termination of his position and eternal damnation.

The groom hadn’t been sacked, and neither had Marian. The Oakeses and the Bridgertons both knew who was to blame for the scandal and were liberal enough not to take it out on the servants.

But the rest of society … Oh ho, they’d had a grand time with the news. And the consensus was, Georgiana Bridgerton had got nothing more than she deserved.

Uppity spinster.

Ugly hag.

She should thank him. It’s not as if she had anyone else lined up to offer for her.

It was all false, of course. She wasn’t an uppity spinster or an ugly hag, and as it happened, she had had a proposal of marriage, but when she’d chosen not to accept it she’d also chosen not to embarrass the man by advertising the fact.

She was nice that way. Or at least she tried to be.

She probably was a spinster, though. Georgie wasn’t certain what age marked the line between dewy-fresh and long-in-the-tooth, but at six-and-twenty, she’d likely crossed it.

But she’d done so by choice. She hadn’t wanted a London Season. She wasn’t shy, or at least she didn’t think so, but the thought of those crowds, day-in-and-night-out, was exhausting. Tales of her older sister’s time in London had done nothing to convince her otherwise. (Billie had literally set someone on fire, though not on purpose.)

It was true that Billie had gone on to marry the future Earl of Manston, but that had nothing to do with her truncated disaster of a Season. George Rokesby lived just three miles away, and they’d known each other all their lives. If Billie could find a husband without leaving the southeast of England, surely Georgie could, too.

It had not been difficult to convince her parents to let her skip a traditional London debut. Georgie had been a sickly sort of child, always coughing and short of breath. She’d grown out of it, mostly, but her mother still fussed, and Georgie might have used that to her advantage once or twice. And it wasn’t as if she’d lied. The choked and polluted London air could not possibly be good for her lungs. For anyone’s lungs.

But now half of London thought she’d skipped the Season because she thought herself above it and the other half because she clearly had some sort of hideous defect her parents were trying to hide from society.

Heaven forfend that a lady might decide not to go to London because she didn’t want to go to London.

“I’m thinking in italics,” Georgie said aloud. That could not possibly be entirely sane. She reached toward her feet and scooped up Blanche. “Am I ruined?” she asked the mostly black cat. “Of course I am, but what does it mean?”

Blanche shrugged.

Or it could have just been the way Georgie was holding her. “Sorry,” she muttered, setting her back down. But she put a little pressure on the cat’s back, nudging her into prime snuggling position. Blanche took the hint and curled up next to her, purring as Georgie scratched the back of her neck.

What was she going to do?

“It’s never the man’s fault,” she said out loud.

Freddie Oakes wasn’t holed up in his bedroom, trying not to hear his mother sobbing over his misfortune.

“They’re probably fêting him at his club. Well done, you,” Georgie snipped out in the overblown accents of the English elite. Which was to say, her accent, but it was easy to make it sound like something grotesque.